Eight Hours of Tolstoy

And yet its still shorter than the novel

This two-part rendition of War and Peace represents more than a prestige mega-

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production; this is the barbaric yawp of the Soviet film industry circa 1968, an entertainment A-bomb test announcing to the world: Here is what we are capable of. (The Kremlin was eager enough for a decisive blow in the cinematic-spectacle race to put a Red Army detachment under star-director Sergei Bondarchuks command.) Far from the front lines of the Battle of Borodino, Bondarchuks camera platoon applies its virtuosity to the country estates and pastel ballrooms that serve as display cases for the films Natasha (teen ballerina Ludmila Savelyeva). The novels domestic drama is judiciously streamlinedsubplots pared off, characters demoted to the backgroundbut theres still an impulse to get everything in. (Bondarchuk relies on voice-over to draw things together.) But of course its magnificently presumptuousand fearlessto even attempt to transfer Tolstoys historical-psychological scope, intact, to another medium. Its as hubristic as invading Russia.